


I'll Talk, You Listen

by LoveThemFiercely



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: All Kinds of Love, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Belonging, Emergency Medical Technicians, F/M, Finnlo Friendship, Footsteps, Foster Care (Referenced/Background), Hair Braiding, Hospitalization, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Abuse (Past/Background), Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Medical Procedures/Treatment (Referenced), Music, No One's Ever Really Gone, Psychopomps, Seizures (Referenced), Senses, Serious Injures (Existing/Referenced), Shovel Talk, Sirens, Sort Of, part of a larger story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21539179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveThemFiercely/pseuds/LoveThemFiercely
Summary: This story is part of a larger story, a modern mythology AU in which siren!Rey (a psychopomp empowered by Persephone to shepherd the souls of the dying and dead to Hades' realm) has been caught up with college TA Ben Solo in a love story that is bigger than either of them realized.  This led Ben to Rey's found family, where he's found he is part of something he never knew he needed.  At this point in our story, Rey has been injured during the loss of her powers, and Ben has been seriously injured (again!) being (unnecessarily?) protective of her.  In this chapter we celebrate Finnlo as a friendship; Finn is helping Ben learn that he belongs, and to whom.
Relationships: Dopheld Mitaka/Geno Namit, Finn & Ben Solo, Finn/Rose Tico, Kaydel Ko Connix/Poe Dameron, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Finnlo-Focused Multiship Anthology 2019





	I'll Talk, You Listen

**Author's Note:**

> So a shovel talk, for those of you not already familiar with the term, is the "don't you dare hurt my friend" talk you give to someone beginning a relationship with a friend of yours (it's a Buffy reference?). This is only sort of one of those, and it's a little one-sided, but they understand each other.
> 
> You don't really have to read the larger story to understand this story (at least, that is to be hoped), but you're welcome to read it once all is revealed. Psychopomp and Circumstance can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16582733 if you're so inclined. :)
> 
> Gorgeous moodboard that is *exactly* what I envisioned by @QueenOfCarrotFlowers (and explaining the inside of my brain is no joke, y'all), editing and wrangling and guiding and a lot of future planning by @flypaper_brain, that is what @flypaper_brain does and does amazingly well even when I am difficult, and lovely, lovely artwork by @Jessa, who has a knack for both extracting stories from my head in the form of art and for putting stories in my head with art.

** **

Ben was drifting, half-asleep in his bed, when Finn said they had a thing. Rey was having more tests, she was always having more tests. Tests were good, though, if they helped her. She needed her balance back, needed whatever the seizure (and not being a siren any more) had taken away from her. Ben was having some trouble staying all the way awake since Rey had fallen and so had he. Doctor Canady said that was normal, was okay, that Ben’s body was healing the damage the SUV had done when it hit him, as well as the damage Ben had done to himself to catch Rey - which in Ben's view had been completely worth it. He kept that thought to himself, though, because it made everyone’s voices sound strained, as though if he could see them, their eyes would look pinched.

Rey had told him he wasn’t allowed to leave her again. Hades had told him the same, in his strange, formal way. He still wasn’t a fan of Hades, no matter what he said about his job, but the god was right about this. Ben wasn’t any kind of hero, not really, not as broken as he sometimes felt inside, but maybe he could be, if Rey needed him. He could be a hero, if it would help him stay with Rey. Persephone, Dread Queen, had asked Ben if he would give his life for Rey; but Hades had made him see that it was better to give it _ to _her. Maybe Ben owed the god for that, even if he was angry about losing his mom.

They’d given him something, medicine, in his arm. They were still giving it to him; not enough to make the world go away, but something that made his eyes want to stay closed even while he was technically, he guessed, awake. It was too hard to move, which was okay, because he didn’t especially want to move right now. It hadn’t gone well the last time, and it was still a little hard to breathe when he thought about that. No one else seemed to want him to move either.

Finn sat down in the chair by the bed. Ben got a little lost remembering and thinking about how he’d known it was Finn, every time he came into the room.

He’d had the opportunity in the last few days (he thought), to learn a lot about footsteps. Poe’s sounded like he was dancing even when he was just walking across a room, the rhythm and… _ bounce _ of them was like music. There was usually actual music, too; Poe was always humming, or singing, or something in between. He would stop, at first, when he got all the way into the room and saw that Ben’s eyes were still closed; but Ben thought, once, he must have made a noise, some sort of disappointed sound. After that Poe kept right on singing; sometimes Ben could tell what and sometimes he couldn’t, but it was always soothing and he felt warm, almost like he could smell hot chocolate.

Kaydel’s steps shared some of that music, but were lighter and at the same time more serious with purpose; and her hand would light on his wrist, cool and professional for a moment, all EMT business before she squeezed and told him he was doing well. She brought the smell of antiseptic and citrus with her, like the hospital itself but not as jagged. Dolph’s steps were soft, partly because of the shoes he wore, Ben thought, for spending so much time on his feet like nurses did; but they sounded like comfort. Sometimes they were followed by Eugene’s more concrete, sharper sounds, the EMT’s steps in time behind Dolph like a shadow, or a shield. Dolph’s footfalls were quicker, happier maybe, when Eugene was there.

Rose walked heavily for someone as small as she was, which puzzled Ben until he realized she was telegraphing her presence, sound and greeting and the faint smell of sandalwood. Of all of them, she seemed most concerned with how he _ felt _ over how he _ was _. She’d talk to him about their schoolwork, hers and Kaydel’s and Rey’s, and how Rey was doing, and she’d ask him if he wanted a new braid in his hair. When he’d nod with Herculean effort, eyes still closed, she’d say she’d ask the boys, and he could hear the grin in her voice. 

It kind of made Ben want to look at her so he could see it, but he saved the times he could keep his eyes open for Rey and the sunlight in her smile and the forest in her eyes. Hers, Rey’s, were the footfalls he hadn’t heard; he wasn’t really sure what was happening with her balance, what had made her fall, but he didn’t think her feet had touched the ground in however long it had been. So he needed his eyes, for her, and his hands, to know she was there, and he was a little afraid whenever she wasn’t holding him, warm against his skin, the scent of flowers in the sunshine of a summer’s day.

Today when Rose had asked about his hair, Finn and Poe had come to sit down one on either side of him and fussed with it, which felt good, and they’d chattered away to each other over Ben’s head about lots of things. They’d talked about Finn’s Psych class. Finn had said Poe should take one too, to learn how to handle people in crisis; Poe had countered that he didn’t need to learn a new way to talk to people just to get them to where they were going and save their lives, but he’d think about it. He was really just the bus, he’d said, after the first bit of lifesaving was over. Kaydel would be handling the patient, Poe had explained, his voice full of pride. Finn had replied that bus drivers were some of the best conversations he’d had, when he was… and then his sentence had abruptly stopped mid-stream.

That hadn’t sounded right, so Ben had thought he’d better have a look. He’d let a little of the room in between his eyelids, which was still a lot harder than he thought it ought to be. They’d dimmed the lights, though, that was nice, they didn’t stab at him like they’d done before, and he got a vague, blurry impression of Finn and Poe doing some sort of complicated-looking hug and shoulder-slap thing before Poe gathered his stuff to go. Finn was talking. “Yeah, man, I’m gonna stay a little longer, Ben and I have things… we have things.” Things? 

Finn’s head had swung around. “Oh, hey Ben, you with us?” He’d said that out loud, then. “Yeah, there you are. Rey said you’d been awake more, but none of us had seen it, we were getting a little jealous.” He’d grinned down at Ben and offered him a cup of ice chips, the clean smell of soap tickling Ben’s nose while Poe said goodbye. Of all the treads catalogued now, in Ben’s mind, Finn’s were probably the most cautious; almost tiptoe, which couldn’t have been easy for someone as solidly built as Finn. He walked as though worried about being a disturbance, or as though he wanted his entrance into the room to be calm. And generally it was. 

And then he was back to now, and he’d been wandering thinking about how he’d got here, and Finn was still talking, so he should pay attention. Ben’s eyes were closed again. 

“Ben? I’m not sure how awake you are. Do you think… you don’t have to say anything, really, but do you think you can listen, if I talk to you? I… there are a few things I want to say while Rey’s not here. Is that alright? You can nod, or squeeze my hand, or answer if you can. Otherwise, I’ll wait, because you’re working on healing, that’s hard work, and it’s the most important thing you’re doing right now. So everything else can wait.” Finn gripped his hand, and it was nice to know that it could wait if Ben wasn’t ready to listen, but it made him want to help Finn with whatever had made his voice sound wrong when he was talking to Poe.

“...m’here.” His voice was slurred and full of gravel, but he’d heard it and Finn had too. “C’n talk, ‘ll listen… k, you ‘lright?” 

The smile was back in Finn’s voice, along with a kind of wondering sound. “Yeah, Ben, I’m okay. I wanted to talk to you about Rey. It’s not really fair, I guess, to have this kind of conversation now, when you can’t keep your eyes open, but that’s some of why we need to have it. So I’ll talk, and you squeeze my hand so I know you’re still listening, and maybe we’ll come back to it again later, when you’re more yourself.”

Ben tried to nod, but he wasn’t sure if he’d succeeded, so he tightened his hand on Finn’s. That seemed to work. “Okay. So, listen, you almost died, again, you know that, don’t you?” Ben squeezed again, to show he’d heard, and to make sure he was still there, with Finn, and not in a phantom of his lecture room talking to the God of Death, dying and cold to the bone. The beep to his right got faster. “No, hey, you didn’t, you’re okay, they said you’re gonna be fine, sorry. I really should be better at this.” The last sentence was softer and Ben wasn’t completely sure it was meant for him. 

“What I mean is, you’ve got to _ stop _ that. We, all of us, we were worried about you. I saw them take you down the hall and I… you were… aargh, dammit. Fuck.” That was a strange enough combination of syllables that Ben let the room in again, enough of it to see Finn scrub his other hand down his face, before the sight escaped to the outside of his eyelids like things kept doing. “We all care about you, _ I _care about you, is what I’m trying to say. Badly. Saying it badly.” It was Finn who squeezed this time, his palm warm against Ben’s own colder hand, while he laughed softly at himself.

When he started again, his voice was more serious. “But Rey, she… it’s different for her. Well, you know that, obviously you do. She doesn’t, Ben, she doesn’t take the care with her heart that she should. I mean, she waits, and she watches, and not many people make it past her gates; but once you belong to her, then she belongs to you too. She doesn’t… ugh, this is hard; she doesn’t hold back. With herself. And that’s good, but it’s not, because too many people have gone and taken a piece of her with them, I think. I don’t know, because she won’t say, but that’s what I think.” He paused for a minute, and Ben wondered why, and then he thought he should let Finn know he was still here, so he pressed their hands together and when he heard the ice chips rattle he took some.

Finn started to talk again, so it must have worked. "They told me, you know, when my parents died, that no one's ever really gone. And I was young. Maybe too young for that sentence, because I said it to myself for _ years _ before I went to sleep, thinking I'd wake up in the morning and there they'd be. But they never were. And everywhere else I went, I made sure I was gone before they would be.” There was a _ world _ of pain in those words, Ben thought, and he wanted to say something, to say he could stick around for the rest of them too, that he didn’t _ want _to be gone, for Finn or Rey or anyone else, but the words were too big to lift, and only the smallest landed in the room.

“....here.”

“Good.” The word was warm, and strong, like the hand, before the sound of pain started again.

“Even with Rey, I did the same thing, when we were foster kids together. Hell, I should be having this talk with myself, because there she was, sometimes sick and sometimes helpless and _ always _ lonely but, well, it wasn't going to work out for me, not with the eyes on me like they shouldn't be, and after a while I was gone. I told her what they'd said to me when I saw her there shaking, scared, and her eyes were so far away and I wondered what was happening and if she'd be gone; I whispered it in her ear before I called for help. God, that seizure was the scariest fucking thing I’d ever seen, and that was saying something, even then, never mind later, when... And I think she believed it, what I said, and maybe still does. I don't know how, because I should have been proof it wasn't true.” Finn’s voice was unsteady, but still strong, and bitter, like bad coffee gone cold.

He sounded angry, too, a sharp red-gray sort of tone. Ben sorted through the words and thought the anger was Finn’s for himself. “There were a lot of times in between where...well, where I _ was _ almost gone, for real, one way or another.” There was a lot of weight, crushing weight, behind those words. Ben thought for a moment that the weight was going to break something, come tumbling out and bury them both, and he didn’t think he was up to carrying that much, not yet. Maybe later he could help hold that weight, whatever it was; he wanted to ask the questions that would lighten it. It was only fair, after they’d all made him feel welcome and _ theirs _as much as he was Rey’s and always would be. 

Suddenly he was impatient, because this should be a conversation, but it wasn’t. Frustration added a little fire, though, enough energy to lift his hand so he could clumsily pat the hand under it. There was a wet chuckle. “Thanks, man. Maybe I’ll tell you about it later. Huh. That’s weird, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to do that before, tell somebody about the places I’ve been and the things I’ve seen; you’re something else, aren’t you? Can’t even string two, three words together or get your eyelids all the way apart, we practically just met; and I still feel like I might want to tell you the worst of it, of me. But that’s not why we’re talking. That’s for later. Stop distracting me, you!” The laugh wasn’t as damp-sounding this time. Ben felt a noise in his own chest, not quite a laugh, more of an amused wheeze-rumble, but the sound made it all the way to Finn’s ears, he thought, without setting Ben’s chest on fire, so that was something.

“Woah, calm down there, don’t hurt yourself, you sound like forty miles of bad road.” The hand patted Ben’s in turn, altogether a better job of it than he’d done himself. “Rey was right, though, maybe, to believe me, when I said it to her, told her no one’s ever really gone; because we met again, and I'd walk through fire before I leave her a second time. That’s… not an exaggeration. So just you understand, everyone Rey knows should spend all their spare moments making sure she understands that no one is ever really gone. So don’t make her stop believing that; don’t _ go _. You went and almost proved her wrong too many times for my taste already, and you'd better get it together, Ben. Between Rey and Rose,” Finn declared, love and surety spilling over into the room with Rose’s name, “I know where I belong, and I aim to stay there. You belong with her, and with us, so you be sure you stay here too."

Listening had taken a lot more out of him than he’d expected; Ben was _ tired _ . Voices and steps were moving toward the door, but he didn’t have the energy to identify them, blended together as they were. Finn didn’t seem to have noticed. “Remember that, if you don’t remember anything else about this. We want you to _ stay _, Ben; especially Rey, but… all of us. Hey, none of that, it’s a good thing.” Ben didn’t know what that meant until Finn’s thumb swiped across one cheek, then the other, careful of the stitches, and his face was wet. “All right?”

“...Yeah...,” Ben sighed in Finn’s general direction. 

The sounds and movement reached the door, resolving mostly into Dolph’s voice and the squeak of a wheelchair over an underlayer of approaching feet. “...Doctor Canady thinks it’ll most likely resolve itself if we give it time; you’ll just have to deal with a lot of PT while you figure out your balance again. Your voice is sounding a lot better, though.”

“Thanks. It’s nice to be able to use it again. Is there PT for that too? Because my singing voice needs some exercise.” Rey’s voice was light and teasing and absolutely wonderful to hear. Time for his eyelids to get some exercise, too, Ben thought, even if it made him feel like the world’s weakest weightlifter. This was going to take some work. 

Rose’s steps crossed the room to where Finn was sitting. “Hey, handsome. Did you two have a nice talk?” Oh, that was what a hello kiss sounded like.

The sound of contentment was in Finn’s reply. “You know, we actually did. Ben’s a really excellent listener.” There were a few chuckles, but Finn’s tone had been entirely serious. 

“That he is. Hey there.” Oh, that gorgeous, loving sound was for him. It was like warming up an engine in the dead of winter; heat spread through Ben, eyes and arms and energy springing into service again. He blinked his eyes open to the sight of Rey’s face, smiling at him, the brown-green of her eyes warmer than winter woods had any right to be. His answering smile was wide and instinctive as he held his arms out to her without a hint of self-consciousness. He wanted the whole world to know how she made him feel, and her most of all.

Dolph transferred Rey from the wheelchair to their bed, then stepped back to sling an arm around Eugene’s waist, his face fond. The world was instantly right side round again, full of golden skin and flowers and sun on Ben’s face, here in a hospital bed indoors. Rey snugged herself into his shoulder, a kiss landing next to his eye that might or might not have been intended for some other part of his face. “I missed you,” she whispered, soft next to his ear. Ben lost a little time memorizing the way her hair curved down past the hollow of her throat.

“Okay, folks, that’s our cue.” That was Rose, herding them all toward the door. “Whatever business anyone else has can wait.” Rose was a fantastic human being, he thought. The steps and sounds retreated.

Rey propped herself on one elbow to contemplate him, eyes serious, searching Ben from top to toe and back to his face again. Her expression smoothed into something less full of concern once she’d satisfied herself that he was okay. “You’re tired. We’ll have a nap. Rest is a good thing.” She smiled at him again, a little puzzled. “You and Finn were talking, were you? I mean, I know how this goes, the one-sided conversation thing; it’s not easy,” she laughed, “Did you have anything to say?”

Ben hummed, drawing Rey down onto his shoulder again; closer was better. Words were uncooperative. Touching was excellent. 

“Not much. More later. ‘N list’nin’. He needs… t’talk.”

Sleep was definitely on the agenda. He should finish the thought first, because he had a feeling sleep would be happening with or without his say-so. 

“He’s… ’Smine. “An’ ‘mhis. Fr’nds...list’n… help… b’long. Finn’s mine now. ‘F I c’n help…”

A yawn threatened to take the top of his head clean off the rest of it. 

“B’long t’eachoth’r. ‘Sgood.” One more thing he needed to say, before he slept safe in the sun with Rey. “R’mind me? T’ask Finn ‘bout… things?”

“Got it. He belongs to you, and you belong to him, and the two of you are going to talk about something that will help him… like he was just talking to you?” Rey’s hand was stroking his face, and sleep was happening.

“Mm-hm. Don’ wan’ him t’hurt. If’s me he needs… d’no why, but ’sright.” 

Ben thought he heard a sort of surprised “Huh”, but it was mostly lost in the feel of skin and the scent of sunlight. “Shh. Okay. I’ll remind you to talk to Finn. Sleep, Ben.” The sound of Finn’s pain and his laughter both followed Ben into sleep; but Rey would tell him when he woke, and he would make things right, make them better. That was what love did; all kinds of love.

**Author's Note:**

> Finn is studying to be a social worker, for various excellent reasons. He's still working on his, err, bedside manner? Professional demeanor? If you're confused by names, Dolph is Dopheld Mitaka (a nurse), Eugene is Geno Namit (an EMT).


End file.
